LarryMolly
Warren Scout
Hi all - I'm looking to hear people's experiences who keep unbonded rabbits separately as we unexpectedly took on a third rabbit on Thursday.
We'd been toying with the idea of bonding a third to our pair but hadn't actually decided for sure either way yet. Anyway I saw a rabbit for sale online living in the most horrendous conditions (surprised that they'd advertised her in that state) and after seeing that my partner and I couldn't leave her, so we went to get her the following day.
We're lucky that we have the space and spare pens etc so she's living upstairs in a 6x2 pen in our spare bedroom recuperating. (Will be increasing the pen overtime but she's been confined to a tiny cage all her life so don't want to overwhelm her with too much space too soon - presume this is the right thing to do?)
Our bonded pair live downstairs and have our whole dining room 24/7 and free range in the hall and lounge when we're home.
So they are on separate floors, not in sight of each other and don't share any playtime territory but obviously will be able to smell each other in the air and on us. We've been changing clothes and washing hands when cleaning them out to limit this as much as we can.
We were expecting it to affect our bonded pair from what I know about rabbits and have read but I'm keen to hear what's happened to other people when bringing in another rabbit within smelling distance and see if anyone has any advice on different things we can do to make it easier on the bonded pair.
So two things have happened really: our spayed female (Molly) in the bonded pair lost her litter training entirely on Sunday and was producing what seemed to be extra smelly urine. So I had a fun Sunday of cleaning up multiple wees all day!!! And our male (Larry) has been chasing Molly a few times. This is always followed by snuggling and so far hasn't escalated but the chasing is out of character.
In people's experiences is this normal and does this behaviour settle down once they get used to the change? Or will they continue to feel threatened? And I'd be interested to hear any advice on how we can make this easier on them as well.
(Have posted in health as well about our new rabbit.)
Thanks
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We'd been toying with the idea of bonding a third to our pair but hadn't actually decided for sure either way yet. Anyway I saw a rabbit for sale online living in the most horrendous conditions (surprised that they'd advertised her in that state) and after seeing that my partner and I couldn't leave her, so we went to get her the following day.
We're lucky that we have the space and spare pens etc so she's living upstairs in a 6x2 pen in our spare bedroom recuperating. (Will be increasing the pen overtime but she's been confined to a tiny cage all her life so don't want to overwhelm her with too much space too soon - presume this is the right thing to do?)
Our bonded pair live downstairs and have our whole dining room 24/7 and free range in the hall and lounge when we're home.
So they are on separate floors, not in sight of each other and don't share any playtime territory but obviously will be able to smell each other in the air and on us. We've been changing clothes and washing hands when cleaning them out to limit this as much as we can.
We were expecting it to affect our bonded pair from what I know about rabbits and have read but I'm keen to hear what's happened to other people when bringing in another rabbit within smelling distance and see if anyone has any advice on different things we can do to make it easier on the bonded pair.
So two things have happened really: our spayed female (Molly) in the bonded pair lost her litter training entirely on Sunday and was producing what seemed to be extra smelly urine. So I had a fun Sunday of cleaning up multiple wees all day!!! And our male (Larry) has been chasing Molly a few times. This is always followed by snuggling and so far hasn't escalated but the chasing is out of character.
In people's experiences is this normal and does this behaviour settle down once they get used to the change? Or will they continue to feel threatened? And I'd be interested to hear any advice on how we can make this easier on them as well.
(Have posted in health as well about our new rabbit.)
Thanks
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk